The Emerald City of Oz

1910, undated Reilly & Lee edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Emerald City of Oz
Original and purchase price unknown
Hardcover with stains
B

Baum intended this to be the last Oz story.  He wanted to write other books, and since he couldn't toss all the characters into Reichenbach Falls, or a well, he decided to have Glinda make the entire country invisible to outsiders.  It didn't work, for him or Glinda, but that's why there are illustrations of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman crying.  And that's why the last chapter is called "How the Story of Oz Came to an End."

Not only isn't this the last Oz book, but it's the first Oz book to have creative chapter titles, in this case all starting with the word "how."  It also has a dual storyline, one thread being about how Dorothy, her aunt, and her uncle move to Oz and travel around to odd little towns and villages, the other being about how the Nome King and his general plot to conquer Oz.  Not all that much of the story is set in the Emerald City, although it is the first book since Land to be set mostly in Oz.  It's also an improvement on the previous two Oz books.  We see how charming Oz is and what a loss it would be if the Nomes and their allies laid it to waste.

Chapter Three begins with a description of the Emerald City, including population (57,318 people in 9654 buildings).  Then we're told of the surrounding countryside, and that there are more than half a million people in the Land of Oz, "although some of them, as you will soon learn, were not made of flesh and blood as we are." 

What follows is Baum's first explicitly utopian description of Oz.  Death is rare and poverty unknown.  "All property of every sort belonged to the Ruler," i.e. Ozma.  "The people were her children, and she cared for them."  Everyone shares what they make, whether grain or jewellery.  People work half the time and play half the time.  So basically, this is utopian socialism with a monarchist twist, which I found very appealing as a child and even into my 20s, although now much less so.  Baum says, "I do not suppose such an arrangement would be practical with us," but I wonder if this is one reason the Oz books took so long to be accepted in public libraries.  (The official reason was that librarians didn't want to collect series, an unfathomable thought these days.)

Baum claims that there are no evil Ozites, or even ones "who possess a selfish or violent nature."  Then he admits that there are exceptions, in the remote parts of the land.  "I suppose every country has some drawbacks, so even this almost perfect fairyland could not be quite perfect."  It would be a pretty boring series if it were.

This is the book where Dorothy goes Bunburying, in a more innocent way than Algernon Moncrieff.  She visits a town called Bunbury, entirely composed of baked goods.  Here, and in Utensia, a town entirely composed of utensils and other kitchen aids, Baum lets loose with the puns in a way he probably hasn't since Mo.  Most of them are still accessible, although I think it's been many decades since a masher meant "a man who makes unwelcome sexual advances, often in public places and typically to women he does not know."  He winks at Dorothy "somewhat impertinently" and says, "I'm fond of little girls myself."  Um, yeah.

She also travels to Bunnybury, where she teaches the king to appreciate what he's got, and to towns populated by paper dolls and jigsaw puzzles.  There are also two places, Flutterbudget Center and Rigmarole Town, which are "the Defensive Settlements of Oz," since they house, respectively, people who worry too much and people who talk too much.  Additionally, although not strictly speaking a town, they also visit the Athletic College, where the students acquire knowledge through pills, so they have more time to devote to sports.  All of these places are more interesting than anywhere Dorothy went in the fourth or fifth books.

As for the other main plot, the very first chapter is "How the Nome King Became Angry."  Roquat is upset because he's thinking about how Ozma, Dorothy, and the rest stole his "slaves" (the Evian royal family) and his Magic Belt.  He wants revenge, but his sarcastic servant Kaliko (another of my favorite minor characters) reminds him that he can't cross the deadly desert surrounding Oz.  His new general, Guph, suggests a tunnel, which makes sense since the Nomes are miners.  Guph gets the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phanfasms to help, although everyone is planning to sell the others out, including Guph.

Despite going to the rescue of the Evian royals three books ago, Ozma now won't even defend her own country, because war is bad.  Yes, even a war of defense.  She's suddenly become an extreme pacifist.  Of course, she and the other Oz natives probably won't die, but Dorothy and the other immigrants could.  At the least, everyone is going to be enslaved and the country turned into a desert.

Luckily, the Scarecrow, "probably the wisest man in all Oz," comes up with a plan.  He has Ozma use the Magic Belt to fill the tunnel with dust, so that when the warriors emerge, they'll have to slake their thirst in the Forbidden Fountain, whose Water of Oblivion will wipe clean their memories.  This is a fountain that Dorothy has seen on every visit but never mentioned to us before.  It will return, as will the Nome King, but more about that later.

Glinda, who has a Magic Record Book that records all events in the world, knows all that's going on, so she comes up with the invisibility plan.  She doesn't do anything to prevent the invasion, but maybe she trusts the Scarecrow to save them.  For some reason, her castle is now located in the north, but I think this is the beginning of the geographical confusion that plagues the series.  Baum apparently misread a map slide from his traveling show, tried to fix things, and it all got very muddled.  Usually it's east and west that are mixed up, not only with each other but with left and right, and with Munchkin and Winkie.  This also affects the lands outside Oz, so that the Nome Country was closest to the Munchkins in Ozma but is now closest to the Winkies.

Speaking of travel, there's not much point to the Shaggy Man being on the expedition (or Omby Amby for that matter), but he does get the funny line, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries."  The Wizard chimes in that he's "been to Europe and Ireland."

Dorothy is also accompanied by Billina and Toto, who fought in the previous book but now have made peace.  Billina supposedly is the first chicken in Oz, which doesn't explain how she's managed to have a dozen chicks, all named either Dorothy or Daniel.  Her brood first appeared in Road, but they're already grown up at the beginning of this story, with 86 children and over 300 grandchildren.  In fact, there are two Emerald City chickens in Wizard, and there's an illustration of a Gillikin rooster in Land.  Since no one's allowed to eat or even kill chickens in Oz, their fate is a mystery.

The illustrations are good, with Neill representing nearly every type of the many creatures mentioned.  (There's no view of the Fuddles, but I remember seeing them in a reproduction of a color plate from the first edition.)  There are no particular standouts, although I like the stately columns of the college.

It would be three years before Baum returned to Oz, shorter than the interval between the first and second books, but it wasn't yet a series then.  Meanwhile, he wrote a couple books about Trot and Cap'n Bill, which I've read but don't own.  The Sea Fairies and Sky Island are still in print, although I'm not sure if they contain the Neill illustrations.